Alex Palmer - Blood Redemption

Anger flipped to coldness, white toxicity became planetary iciness, powerful in its capacity to plan. This detachment was an anaesthetic, it was useful. She could be possessed by grief or rage and still act. She had things to do. Important things to do.

Lucy started her car and moved it so that it straddled the pit. She needed to have a barrier between her and whatever might be in there.

She went into the office and taking her phone out of her pack rang Graeme. The battery would need to be recharged soon but there was nothing she could do about it. He answered at once.

‘New Life Ministries. Preacher Graeme Fredericksen speaking.’

‘It’s only me, Graeme. You don’t have to go on with that sort of shit,’ Lucy said.

‘I’m sorry, but I don’t quite understand you. I don’t think I know who you are. Is there someone in particular you wanted to talk to?’

‘Someone gave me your name. And your number. I thought you’d know me,’ Lucy said, assuming from this reply that Graeme was expecting someone else to be listening in on their conversation. ‘You see, I’m looking for someone. Someone who matters to me a lot. And they said you might be able to help. So don’t hang up.’

‘Tell me what you want,’ came the reply. ‘I’m always here to help those who need it.’

‘Yes or no is all I want. Will I find who I’m looking for …’ She paused, thinking. ‘You know, there are places where I was afraid to go.

Because I thought if I did I’d meet all my old ghosts back there and I’d be frightened of them. But I had to go back there because I had nowhere else to go, and I can tell you now, I’m not afraid of anything any more. Am I going to find who I’m looking for here? I look around this place and I can see that something’s changed, it’s all boarded up.

You know what’s different, don’t you? Now you had better be honest with me. You really had.’

‘Yes, I think you’re right. You probably need to know that. You probably also need to know that the person you seek is there because they chose to be. They sleep where they sleep now through their own actions. If they sleep in the cradle of death’s river, it’s because they chose to be there.’

‘Do you know the thing that hurts me most, Graeme? It’s when people let me down. I really hope that’s not going to happen any more.

I’ll be waiting to find out. I’ll be where I said I would be and I hope everyone else will be there too.’

‘Though you may have to wait longer than you expect, I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.’

Lucy cut the connection. Time was no longer on her hands, she had things to do. Things to work on, things to build.

She cleaned her gun, reloaded it and left it sitting on the table, ready to use. In the cupboard she found switches and devices, explosive materials that Graeme had stored there. He had taught her about these things as well but she had not been quite so interested in them at the time. Now they could be useful. She fossicked around until she found in a drawer a stapled document titled, Ka-boom: Ways to stopabortion that work.

I’m going to give you a memorial, Greggie, the only type that anyone will ever take any fucking notice of where you’re concerned. I’m going to take something out for you in return for what they did to you. You’ll see.

She went to work, believing herself to be simply working and not sitting with every muscle tensed, concentrating ferociously on each connection built, obsessed by what she was doing. When she had finished, she was exhausted and terribly hungry. She tossed her sleeping bag on the pallet and lay down on it, holding her gun, aiming it at the ceiling, making pretend shots at the shadows. You be there tonight, Graeme. Then you can explain to me a few of the things you’ve done lately, can’t you? I’ll be waiting for you. Despite her hunger, after some little time she slept, as deeply as she would have done if she had been drugged.

Harrigan wanted to make Lucy Hurst dance for him but the truth was that he could not move. Once the options were laid on the table they came down to a single possibility: watch and wait. Exert pressure, push people a little and see what will break, then pick up the pieces.

He had put in place all the resources he had: surveillance teams, street patrols, saturation coverage in the media, his own people monitoring every scrap of information that was fed to them, waiting for the break. Other than that, he was fixed in the small square of space that made up his office.

Outside his window, the weather seemed to be engaged in the same kind of phoney war. The wind was chasing rubbish through the air, using it as a punching bag for unseen fists. The ground was dry, there was as yet no rain, only an anticipation. He was detached and sealed away in this building, watching for an outcome through his wide glass window, an unwilling spectator at some organised gladiatorial event where the pleasure for most of the other spectators is that the outcomes are real.

His people had brought the preacher in and Harrigan had decided to keep him waiting, although he doubted that this tactic would have much effect on the man. He laid his photographs out on the table one by one and asked himself what he could achieve by placing these images in front of someone he had already decided was unreachable.

The preacher was still human. Most people are accessible through fear and others can’t resist a game. He gathered the photographs into a folder and walked out of his office.

In the interview room, the preacher sat waiting with Trevor and Ian. Harrigan greeted him with his professional smile. Ian moved his chair back to sit against the wall, Trevor to the side out of the way.

Harrigan had asked for space while he talked with the preacher.

‘Thanks for coming in, Graeme. We appreciate it,’ he said, taking his seat.

‘Paul, I am happy to assist you in any way I can. I hope I will have something of value to tell you.’

‘Good.’ Harrigan’s tone was perfunctory. ‘Just a point to get clear to begin with. You know Lucy Hurst?’

‘I do indeed. She is a member of my congregation, a very troubled young woman. She was, or is, in desperate need of help. However,’ the preacher forestalled him, ‘I am afraid I am unable to repeat any of the conversations we may have had together. They are strictly confidential. I’m afraid that confidence is inviolable.’

‘That wasn’t my question, Graeme. Let me tell you what I do want to know. You’re a man of God. That’s what you say you are.’

‘That is what I am.’

‘What makes you that?’

The preacher sat upright, his hands clasped in front of him, resting on the table.

‘You don’t need to ask me that question. You know the answer.

You’ve heard me preach. You know I reach into the heart. It is not my voice that speaks through me but the voice of eternal love, no, of primal love, the first of all loves that speaks through me. I speak an eternal truth to those who will hear it.’

‘Then why do you need this? Your resume with the Family Services Commission says you have a Master of Theology from Freedom World University. Our information says that’s a postbox in a trailer park in South Chicago. Why bother? If you have all those skills without this piece of paper?’

The preacher glanced at the ornately decorated degree that Harrigan had slid across the table towards him.

‘Ian Enright,’ he said, reading the name of the recipient. He looked at Ian. ‘That’s you. Again you have the answer to your question, Paul.

You have already identified the true worth of these pieces of paper.’

‘My question was, why did you bother?’

‘People need the reassurance these things offer.’